You are here

CQC announces new pilot to build picture of the quality of care in local areas

CQC announces new pilot to build picture of the quality of care in local areas

Published:

11 August 2015

Categories:

Media

People and their families who use a range of different health and social care services could in the future learn more about what the quality of care is like across a whole local area as part of a new pilot project being launched by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) today (Tuesday 11 August).

Called 'Quality of Care in a Place', CQC has selected Greater Manchester – including a more in-depth look at Salford and Tameside – and North Lincolnshire for a special pilot exercise that will test out how well coordinated health and care services are in local areas.

By using the results of inspections CQC has carried out, together with other intelligence from local and national organisations, the project will assess whether bringing together knowledge about the quality of care of a whole place can help to encourage providers of health and social care to make improvements locally, and tell people more about how well their local services work together.

The pilot will also specifically look at the experiences of the elderly and people needing mental health care to see whether analysis of different population groups is helpful in building a picture of the system as a whole.

CQC is committed to looking at ways in which the regulation of health and social care can reflect greater integration of services. The findings of the 'Quality of Care in a Place' pilot will feed into the regulator's strategy for the next five years, which CQC is currently developing.

"One of the most important things we can do as a regulator is to be clear and transparent about the picture of health and social care.

"We already know what an valuable source of information our published reports with ratings are for members of the public. Our new 'Quality of Care in a Place' pilot is really about increasing that level of openness even further by building a picture of what the whole quality of care is like for people living in a particular area – including how well services are co-ordinated.

"As well as identifying any issues that need to be tackled across different organisations and finding out more about health inequalities, we will also use the pilot to highlight examples of good practice that other areas can learn from.

"I'm really pleased we are able to start testing out such an important piece of work that could also tell us more about what impact key issues such as quality of leadership and commissioning have on the quality of care across a local area."

Ends

For media enquiries about the Care Quality Commission, please call the press office on 020 7448 9401 during office hours.

Also, follow the team on Twitter for the latest national announcements: @CQCPressOffice.

Journalists wishing to speak to the press office outside of office hours can find out how to contact the team here. (Please note: the duty press officer is unable to advise members of the public on health or social care matters).

For general enquiries, please call 03000 61 61 61.

Last updated:

29 May 2017

Notes to editors

How did CQC select the two local areas for the pilot?

CQC chose areas where we have already completed a significant number of inspections of health and care providers. We are looking at a high level (data only) for Greater Manchester because we believe our findings will contribute to the development of the ‘Devo Manc’ initiative, a main aim of which is to better coordinate health and care services.

Within the Greater Manchester area, we felt it would be useful to look in greater depth at two local areas that local people are more likely to relate to, and chose these because we have rated the acute hospitals in each of them.

A key reason for selecting North Lincolnshire was that it had the highest proportion of ratings outside of the North West and because the area does not include a big city.

CQC will issue and consult on report findings for each local area in early 2016.

About the Care Quality Commission

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and we encourage care services to improve.

We monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and we publish what we find to help people choose care.